Chapter IX. The Long Arm Of The Law
From the first the wound healed rapidly, for Vic's blood was perfectlypure, the mountain air a tonic which strengthened him, and his food andcare of the best. The high-powered rifle bullet whipped cleanly throughhis shoulder, breaking no bone and tearing no ligament, and the fleshclosed swiftly. Even Vic's mind carried no burden to oppress him in carefor the future or regret for the past, for if he occasionally rememberedthe limp body of Hansen on the floor of Captain Lorrimer's saloon hecould shrug the picture into oblivion. It had been fair fight, man toman, with all the odds in favor of Blondy, who had been allowed to pullhis gun first. If Vic thought about the future at all, it was with ablind confidence that some time and in some unrevealed way he would getback to Alder and marry Betty Neal. In the meantime, as the days of thespring went mildly by, he was up and about and very soon there was onlya little stiffness in his right arm to remind him of Pete Glass and thedusty roan.
He spent most of his time close to the cabin, for though he hadforgotten the world there was no decisive proof that the world wouldforget him half so easily; that was not the way of the sheriff. He hadbeen known to spend years in the hunt for a single misdoer and Vichad no care to wander out where he might be seen. Besides, it was verypleasant about the cabin. The house itself was built solidly, roomily,out of logs hewn on the timbered slopes above and dragged down to thislittle plateau. Three mountains, to the north, south and west, rolledback and up, cutting away the sunlight in the early afternoon, but atthis point the quick slopes put out shoulders and made, among them, acomfortable bit of rolling ground, deep soiled and fertile. Here, soKate Barry assured him, the wild flowers came even earlier than they didin the valley so far below them, and to be sure when Vic first walkedfrom the house he found the meadow aflame with color except for thespace covered by the truck-garden and the corral. In that enclosure hefound Grey Molly fenced away from the black with several other horses ofcommoner blood, for the stallion, he learned, recognized no fraternityof horseflesh, but killed what he could reach. Grey Molly was quiterecovered from her long run, and she greeted him in her familiar way,with ears flattened viciously.
He might have stayed on here quite happily for any space of time, butmore and more Vic felt that he was an intruder; he sensed it, ratherthan received a hint of word or eye. In the first place the three werecomplete in themselves, a triangle of happiness without need of anothermember for variety or interest. It was plain at a glance that the girlwas whole-heartedly happy, and whatever incongruity lay between her andthese rough mountains he began to understand that her love for Barry andthe child made ample amends. As for the other two, he always thoughtof them in the same instant, for if the child had her eyes and her hairfrom her mother, she had her nature from the man. They were togetherconstantly, on walks up the mountain, when she rode Black Bart up thesteep places: on dips into the valley, when he carried her before him onthe stallion. She had the same soft voice, the same quick, furtiveways, the same soundless laughter, at times; and when Barry sat in theevening, as he often did for hours, staring at empty air, she wouldclimb on his knee, place his unresisting arm around her, and she lookingup into his face, sharing his silences. Sometimes Vic wondered if theyoung mother were not troubled, made a little jealous by this perfectcompanionship, but he never found a trace of it. It was she, finally,who made him determine to leave as soon as his shoulder muscles movedwith perfect freedom, for as the days slipped past he felt that she grewmore and more uneasy, and her eyes had a way of going from him to herhusband as though she believed their guest a constant danger to Barry.Indeed, to some small extent he was a danger, for the law might dealhardly with a man who took a fugitive out of the very grip of its hand.
By a rather ironical chance, on the very morning when he decided thathe must start his journey the next day but one, Vic learned that hemust not linger even so long as that. Pete Glass and the law had notforgotten him, indeed, nearly so well as he had forgotten the law andPete Glass, for as he sat in his room filling a pipe after breakfastthe voice of Barry called him out, and he found his host among the rockswhich rimmed the southern end of the plateau, in front of the house. Tothe north the ground fell away smoothly, rolled down to the side of themountain, and then dipped easily to the valley--the only direction fromwhich the cabin was accessible, though here the grade was possible for abuckboard. To the south the plateau ended in a drop that angled sharplydown, almost a cliff in places, and from this point of vantage the eyecarried nameless miles down the river.
"Are them friends of yours?" asked Dan Barry, as he stood among thoserocks. "Take a long look." And he handed a strong pair of field glassesto Gregg.
The latter peered over the dizzy edge. Down there, in the very actof fording the river to get to their side of it, he marked fivehorsemen--no, six, for he almost missed the leader of the troop, a dustyfigure which melted into the background. All the terror of the firstflight rushed back on Vic. He stood palsied, not in fear of that possebut at the very thought of pursuit.
"There's only one way," he stammered at length. "I'll--Dan, give me ahand to get a saddle on Grey Molly and I'll laugh at 'em yet. Damn 'em!"
"What you goin' to do?" It was the same unhurried voice which had spokento Vic on the day of the rescue and it irritated him in the same mannernow. Kate had come running from the house with her apron fluttering.
"I'm going down that slope to the north," said Vic, "and I'll get by 'emhell-bent-for-election. Once I show my heels to that lot they're done!"
He talked as much to restore his courage as from, confidence, for ifthe posse sighted him going down that slope on the gray it would take asuper-horseman and a super-horse to escape before they closed the gap.Barry considered the situation with a new gleam in his eye.
"Wait a minute," he said, as Vic started towards the corral. "That wayyou got planned is a good way--to die. You listen to me."
But here Kate broke in on them. "Dan, what are you going to do?"
"I'm going to take the gray and go down the slope. I'm going to lead'em off Vic's trail," said Barry quietly, but it seemed to Vic that heavoided his wife's eye.
The voice of Betty Neal, Vic knew, would have risen shrill at a timelike this. Kate spoke even more low than usual, but there was a thingin her voice that struck a tremor through Gregg. "If it's death for him,what is it for you?"
"Nothing at all. If they see me and head for me before the way's clear,I'll let 'em come up and see they have the wrong man. If I get thechance, I'll lead 'em away. And Vic, you'll hit between those twomountains--see 'em?--and cut across country. No hoss could carry youthere, except Satan, and you couldn't ride him. You'll have to go onfoot but they'll never look for you on that side. When you get to theeasygoin', down in the valley, buy a hoss and hit for the railroad."
Kate turned on Vic, trembling. "Are you going to let him do it?" sheasked. "Are you going to let him do it, again?"
He had seen a certain promise of escape held before him the momentbefore, but pride made him throw that certainty away.
"Not in a million years," he answered.
"You'll do what I say, and you'll start now. I got a better idea thanthat. If you head just over the side of that north mountain you'll finda path that a hoss can follow. It won't take you clear away from themdown below, but there ain't a chance in ten that they'll come that way.Take my old brown hoss with the white face. He'll carry you safe."
Vic hesitated. The fierce eyes of Kate were on him and with all his soulhe wanted to play the man, but liberty was sweet, sweeter than ever toVic. She seemed to give him up as he stood there with his heart, in histhroat; she turned back to Barry.
"Dan!" she pleaded.
She had not touched him, but he made a vague gesture as though brushingaway a restraining hand. She cried: "If you come close to them--if, theystart shooting--you might want to fight back--"
"They shot before," he answered, "and I didn't fire once."
"But the second time?"
To be sure, there would be danger in it, but as Barry himself had said,if the way was closed to him he could surrender to them, and they couldnot harm him. Vic tried in vain to understand this overmastering terrorin the girl, for she seemed more afraid of what Dan might do to theposse than what the posse might do to Dan.
"This ain't a day for fightin'," said Dan, and he waved towards themountains. It was one of those misty spring days when the sun raisesa vapor from the earth and the clouds blow low around the upper peaks;every ravine was poured full of blue shadow, and even high up theslopes, where patches of snow had melted, grass glimmered, a tendergreen among the white. "This ain't a day for fighting," he repeated.
A shrill, quavering neigh, like the whinney of a galloping horse, rangfrom beyond the house, and Vic saw the black stallion racing up and downhis corral. Back and forth he wove, then raced straight for the bars,flashed above them, and stood free beyond, with the sunshine tremblingon him. He seemed to pause, wondering what to do with his new freedom,then he came at a loose gallop for the master. Not Satan alone, fornow Black Bart slid across the plateau like a shadow, weaving among theboulders, and came straight towards Barry. Vic himself felt a change, asort of uneasy happiness; he breathed it with the air. The very sunlightwas electric. He saw Kate run close to Barry.
"If you go this time, you'll never come back, Dan!"
The black stallion swung up beside them, and as he halted his hoofsknocked a rattling spray of pebbles ahead. On the other side of thewoman and the man the wolf-dog ran uneasily here and there, trying towatch the face of the master which Kate obscured.
"I ain't goin' far. I just want to get a hoss runnin' under me enough tocut a wind."
"Even Satan and Bart feel what I feel. They came without being called.They never do that unless there's danger ahead. What can I do toconvince you? Dan, you'll drive me mad!"
He made no answer, and if the girl wished him to stay now seemed thetime for persuasion; but she gave up the argument suddenly. She turnedaway, and Vic saw in her face the same desperate, helpless look as thatof a boy who cannot swim, beyond his depth in the river. There was nosign of tears; they might come afterwards.
What had come over them? This desperation in Kate, this touch of anxietyin the very horse and the wolf-dog? Vic forgot his own danger whilehe stared and it seemed to him that the spark of change had come fromBarry. There was something in his eyes which Vic found hard to meet.
"The moment you came I knew you brought bad luck with you!" cried Kate."He brought you in bleeding. He saved you and came in with blood on hishands and I guessed at the end. Oh, I wish you--"
"Kate!" broke in Barry.
She dropped upon one of the stones and buried her face in her hands andDan paid no more attention to her.
"Hurry up," he said. "They're across the river."
And Vic gave up the struggle, for the tears of Kate made him thinkof Betty Neal and he followed Dan towards the corral. Around them thestallion ran like a hunting dog eager to be off.